Postcards from The Riverlands

OTYP and Renmark’s Riverland Youth Theatre are collaborating to create a new show based on shared stories of young people in regional areas, through a pen-pal ensemble based across Renmark and the Riverina.

The sharing of ideas, images and stories between these groups of young people will broaden understanding and awareness amongst our rural communities. Postcards from the Riverlands sees young people forging genuine relationships and creating a theatrical work across geographical divides through a creative process. A project such as this one, which brings a diverse range of young people together to create and explore differences as well as discover similarities, will fundamentally help to celebrate our shared humanity in a pertinent and powerful way.

In 2017, artist Dan Giovannoni worked with a group of young artists aged 8-10 in Deniliquin. The young artists linked up with the young people at Riverland Youth Theatre as pen pals and began sharing stories through personalised creative postcards about themselves and their region.

Performance ensembles of teenagers worked in both regions and came together in Balranald to develop the content of the postcards into a small performance. Working with Dan Giovannoni and the RYT artists, the young people developed performance and play-making skills and performed their work to the junior ensembles and other invited guests.

In 2018, the young people from the Riverina and the Riverlands will continue to work on this project and develop the content into a touring work to showcase to their communities and each other.